KISSING

KISSING

multi-tasking

multi-tasking

That Child - Memoir (and)

That Child - Memoir (and)

VOICES FROM EXILE

VOICES FROM EXILE

VOICES FROM EXILE

Tendai Rinos Mwanaka Below is the link to my collection of poems on Zimbabwe and life in exile entitled VOICES FROM EXILE. You can also make orders through the Google editions link below, or you can contact me directly on this Facebook profile.

http://books.google.co.za/books?id=vaVnGAtSvz0C&lpg=PP1&ots=-RGKRTDY4c&dq=tendai+mwanaka&pg=PP1#v...

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Voices from Exile

books.google.co.za

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cholera republic

मद बोब REPUBLIC

वोइसस फ्रॉम वित्हीं US

VOICES FROM WITHIN US

“A chapbook of love poetry”


TENDAI र MWANAKA

PATHS OF LOVE

Like wild raging seas
rough are love’s paths

But a speck in the middle-
of this vast surging mass

In its paths to find,
claim and conquer

Of sunshine and honey
a paradise yonder

Love’s paths are rough
like little mountain lines.





FIRST TOUCH

I had assumed this,
would stay our first touch.
And I had hoped that,
we would hold through.

The blue and yellow butterflies dancing,
in September’s sunlight.
is the susurrus breaking up of the bubbles,
a short-lived awareness?

And like the winter’s pool on the dry,
we keep loosing our waters.
Always flying in the paths of our angers-
the eagle’s talons!











THE WOMAN IN ME

On a sunny lovely May-morning.
I found a rose red brightly blooming.
Besides the road, under a shade Baobab tree.
Oval features implanted so craftily!
Upon such a lovely shape and face.
Soft red-lips, spring of such a voice!
Doubtlessly sweet, fresh and promising.
I will suckle her lips like a bee on honeysuckle.

“Oh, you are so sweet like honey!”
Can I posses you, can I be possessed?
Fix you, fire you, cradle you, case you.
Come on, come nearer, I will reach you.
Breathe the same air that I am breathing.
I will circle you in my arms like ivy on a tree.
My lips on your lips, your heart on my heart!
Sating this awesome yearning, this thirst too!

Think of her as the Woman in me.
Let me mould my Eve, Sculpture her for you.
Let her candid doleful eyes seek yours,
And her sweet-song voice calls for you.
Let her footsteps as she comes and goes
Be like bird-markings appearing faintly-still,
After a full day’s disturbances and winds.
And she will dwell in you like the Woman in me.

I find in her eyes, an innocent heart-truthful.
No pencil can sketch her picture truthfully.
Neither the poet, not a song can sing a true song.
No words, not even thoughts can express her so.
She touches sympathies that are too deeper for words,
Too deeper for my thoughts and feelings.
And to my visions, dreams, hopes and heart,
She bestows life, strength, beauty and light.

She is as fresh as the sun awakening.
She makes us aware of our hearts.
That we have them, they are now timbering.
Awakened to the love they see lustring.
Welcoming this joyousness into our lives.
She fills a void in our spiritual being.
We are ourselves, we are now over-brimming-
In happiness, life and laughter.


She is nurse to wounds still painful,
A prescription the doctor ordered for.
She is stem to sprouting green leaves.
Against the Sun, winds, colds, and rains-
She nourishes and shoulders my heart tender!
And lets her love like the sunset surround me
Stirs feelings no other woman has ever.
Deeper sources no other woman ever sounded,

“O”, the sensations, I can sigh over them.
Pity me, despise me, laugh at me!
I will confess it with outmost humility.
I love her, “O”, how I love her!
I will be her wall against the suns, winds, colds, rains
Her faithful shield against all wrongs, trusting!
I will guide her through life’s shoals, rocks and thorns.
Living and loving, “O”, being loved too!


IS IT


is it your warmth
is it your beauty
is it your courage
is it your sweetness
what is it?

it must be your breath
it must be your voice
it must be your laughter
it must be your smile
what is it?

is it when you breathe
is it when you talk
is it when you laugh
is it when you smile
what is it?

is it husky
is it sassy
is it soft
is it sweet
what is it?

is it because
i am in love with you
what is आईटी?

IF YOU ARE GOING

If you are going
Linger a little while
Like the setting sun’s rays
Touching the coming night
If you are going
Touch the coming night

If you are going
Linger a little while
Kiss me good night
Hold me for the last time
If you are going
Hold me for the last time

If you are going
Linger a little while
Say you cared a little
Come for good-bye
If you are going
Come for a good-bye


COME BACK LILLI

Arise!
My darling,
My beautiful Lilli,
And come.

Behold!
The winter is lasting.
“The cold is over and gone.”
Flowers appear on the Lea.
The season of singing has come.
Let me sing that love song once more.

Show your face-
Let me hear your voice.
Come, my darling,
My beautiful Lilli,
Arise!

You went away,
Without saying goodbye.

A painful morning.
A hurtful morning.
A sorrowful morning-
So many years ago.

Did I hurt you?
Wound you,
Disappoint you,
I wonder!

What did I say?
What did I do?
What did you hear?
That made you walk out.

You left,
Without saying goodbye.
You just went away Lilli,
Without a goodbye.

You left a deep void in my heart,
Return for the wound to heal.

All of my life,
I will never find someone.

To compare with you-
My love,
My Lilli,
My angel.

You are as fair as the Moon.
As brighter as the Sun.
As majestic as stars in procession.


As sweet as honey, with your delights,
“Oh love....!”

You helped me when I was down and low.
You helped me get through all depressions.

All moods and all moments.
All sorrows and all pains.
All joys and all agonies.
All passions and all desires.

With you,
I always want to live.

Without you,
Life has never been the same.

You, without-
Life will never be the same.




Life is so sad,
Signifying nothing-
A shadow so lone!
How loveless lies this heart full once of love?

Come back Lilli.
Come my love,
Come my darling.

Memories of one day,
One cherish,
One life.
Floods me like holy waters of the fountain of love.

When I was so much heartbroken,
Discouraged,
Depressed.

From failures in love,
In life,
In myself.
Suffering from the darkest depths of hurt and pain

Shadows, dark,
Frightening...., fiery
Over me, surging!

Want of light;
To guide me through this dark mine.
I could die from all these,
Unending troubles.

“Oh, Mother Venus!”
You took me into your arms.
Like the young Mother embracing her tot.

Warm, quite,
Peaceful Lilli!
Your arms Lilli!

Softly breathing,
Like the sigh of an Angel.
Your heart tingling,
Like bell tolls afar.

Could it be so?
It must be so.
That,
I still feel the tingle in my heart





Your voice Lilli-
A faint whisper,
Lovelier, soulful...
Caressing.
You said,

That you will always love me?
That you will always love me Lilli.
Love me Lilli!

“So much for love in this mortal sphere.”
Never was there a worry for tomorrow.

A day full of love!
A day full of happiness!
A day full of wonder!

Do you still want me?
Like I do.

Do you still need me?
Why did you leave?

Do you still love me?
Where is the love Lilli?

Come,
Come my love,
Come my darling.

The day you left the world collapsed.
The basis of my life and soul lapsed.
It touched the cavity of my heart,
Where birds of heaven lived-
A nestle of addled eggs.

Everything came crashing down,
With nowhere to go.
A world forgotten,
God forsaken,
Faith lost!

An endless circle,
In the desert,
So desolate!

As a desert plain,
As level.

A ceaseless painful treading,
Your feet so hurtful.
Sweet agonies;
When I think of you I want to cry-

Tears from this heart,
Tears from this soul,
Tears for my care,
Oh, tears for my love!

Distrust;
A disappointment here-
A failure there!

But hope like an echo is faint,
Yet it grows.
Like a thought un-spelt,
It feeds and shows.
Like the moss grows on top of the mountain’s stone.
Like the cactus defies the suns and sand.

As light with its brightness-
Lights up,
Dark nights.
As old give way to new-

I tried it with Cecilia,
With Lana,
With Norma.

Always in their faces,
I saw you.

Always in their voices,
I heard you.

Always in their touches,
I felt you.

“Oh, where is the Woman who used to carry this light for me?”

Second,
Minute,
Hour,
It’s just a godforsaken pattern.

Day,
Week,
Month,
A journey never reached.

Summer’s rains all through winter’s colds,
And with bloom-
Eliding into spring’s greens.




Year after year.
“Oh no, the years!”
Year after year,
The years...
Rolling away.

Yet there you are.
Always shinning so bright.
And it seems like yesterday,
That you were here.

Oh, hearts are victors!
Shinning so bright.

What are you doing?
Where are you?

Away from love,
In a land so far.

What are you doing?
As I cry for you?

What are you thinking of,
As I wait for you?

Bring back the light of your loving
Bring back all those happy memories

Do you still remember those happy times?
Do you remember them?
Like I do?

When tomorrow was there
Timeless..., always

When yesterday was tomorrow,
Forever...., was today.

Those carefree..., loving,
Flying happy days.

Let me be happy,
Just once more Lilli.

Come back Lilli.
Come my love,
Come my darling.









NEED SOMEONE?

You have let them come.
You have let them go.
When there was no reason
To hold onto them anymore.
You have walked all alone.
And it’s now a lifetime-
For you without meaning.

You are not free Caitlin.
You have condemned yourself.
To a life of solitary confinement.
You keep wanting to hide,
Behind that thick wall
That you have built around you.

You will never benefit.
Not from this lonely walk
You will never benefit,
Not from them.
If you can’t let someone
Stay for a little while.

You will never be free.
If you can’t let someone-
Take care of you
You will never be free.
If you can’t learn,
To love them in return.

Don’t you ever need
Need someone Caitlin?
To love and trust,
For you to really live your life.
To the fullest.

अ पोएट'स MIMESIS

A POET’S MIMESIS:


Magnification

I was a small bit of blood in my mother’s heart and womb
I was not larger than a cherry plum but look at me now
I was born a poem.

Perpetual genesis

I can form a composite of genetic suggestions of me.
I can form a new kind of mimesis----,
I can form a poet’s something else sloughing away from me---,
which could have been something.
I can form a sum of all the things that I might have been.

Biological invention

Only faint vague shapes, which were once human,
remain on this collapsed foaming greyness.
A bit of red streaked bone, bones holding the form of checks and brows-
Very poor material to shape a new poem.

The sun of understanding

I am the middle of my own poem looking inwards because I know where it is that I live
I am the middle of my own poem looking in ways no inner eye,
no inner voice cannot see and cannot say.
I am the middle of my own poem looking in ways I cannot share.

Now I am this

The only thing that I truly understand is that I know who I am
and what I was, for once I was a child----, and now I am this.
And all the rest has been lost in shadows of memories, hidden,
all gone away.

I believe

There is no ceiling over me but only an open sky so full of changes.
And my moistures are channelled into this sky.
This sky is now an opposing synchrony that threatens me with turmoil

I am a mirror image

But the outlines of me are still there because I have always diverged.
I have never had concurrent points but echoes of bones and joints.
See my shapes, see my curves, and see my insides-
For I am shinning through your eyes.

My Mortal immortality

I have denied myself form so that I would remain formless,
hiding but not finding myself.
My life is now dominated by mystical caprices-
that relentlessly consigns me to a speculative realm.

The scattering

But I still have a connection here
if can only find my scattered bits before others have found them.
But I would let them scatter, run and hide anywhere.
Even in a poem of their own choice.

The choices

Let them, but I did not let them,
because I know that they would carry with them the seeds of their own survival.
that would make it impossible for me to find their centre:
Not to forgive.
And I am always fighting against this tide:
Never to forgive.

The time of the stomach

In the time of the stomach the words of my own poem precipitates
into crises unanticipated.
Maybe that’s always the way it should be.
But I always carry with me water when I leave the universe
of my poem-
because out there, there are just some few dewdrops
hanging on damp Acacia- leaves.
Each always a promise of pain.

Destiny

To the east, waits Nyanga Mountain and to the west there is Nyangombe River.
But one foot ahead of another I have always moved as I have.
Not trying to match anyone because I have my own destination.

Perseverance

A plodding perseverance would deliver me-
Thus I would create my own supernatural.
and sensing it at every turn by the sheer power of my own will.

I am a poem

I am a poem, a slanting shadow, a thin rope,
a crumbling bulge!
I am a poem, a tiny lip of rock---, here
And another over there, there.

And when this poem is not long enough then it is not long enough-
and any other way of thinking is not as long as this poem is long.

Climbing the mountain

I am a particle defying gravity, a finger-hold here---, a toehold there----,
clinging to the rock surface.
I have known what it is to be a poem with various, momentous meanings-
Look at me now!

The world of no birds

In a world without birds I have always invented my own poem-
to link one piece of time to another and when I have passed,
I would never be the same poem again.

The world of birds

And In a world of birds everything that I am drops into a no sound,
and I have created a common catastrophe that binds the decorations of my poem together.

Decorations, what are?

Decorations, are how we prepare for our own sacrifices.
Decorations, are how we refuse to reject,
and regret for what cannot be.

They are the decorations in all the poet’s poems,
and all their imitations but they fail to stitch together the essences of a tomorrow.
And all our inventions fail to fuel this tomorrow’s diesel engines.

I was born a poem

But life has made me whole yet I was born a poem-
like a mirror of my own life striking a river.
I would never die the way I came,
Plunging into the mystical and dreams of termination, no!

I was born poetical

And between the usual poem and the unusual poem there is very little space
for my own poem to be immortal.
And it is always poetical to thank yourself for this little space.

My dream, the collective I

A dream inhabited by glimpses of silver-edged things in water-
shimmering in their greying colours like trout,
Igniting an ancient memory of silver-flesh dazzling my appetite,
in a banquets of the uninitiated hungry.

My soul

A spangle of shattered flesh
attempting a butterfly design,
my soul, my poem---
Digesting its own experiences.
Not answers, not questions,
for it is time for conjectures.

The language of If

“If I had only----- “
It is only fools who prefer living in the past or even the present
‘If we can only---“
Immerse ourselves among these fools,
their past and this present.
In a time of pure alternation.

The present and the past

Unless if you are trapped you can’t built your future out of your present---,
a present which is not even existing.
But as if it were rows on rows of eyes with senses lost,
like eyes of a gasping fish squirming in pain.
It is a future furrowed in this present and the past.

I was there

I know-
I was there---, at the instant that has left you.
I want to assure you that it is forever out of your reach.
And that there is no substitute of this instant and time,
Time as an alienating device.

There is no time

There is no time---,
just a little bit of time to shape the edges of the weather-
which always have square meanings that stoutly refuses arrangement.


The patterns

These patterns, this poem in my mind,
conducting the waves downwind.
And the wind of the south hungering for empty spaces.
The wind’s fingers sifting through the clouds---,
driving dark clouds toward me.

Judgement day

That the cloud-darkness of holly judgement might appear?
Silence threatening hearing, and anything-
And everything else is possible.
For it is not silent in my mind and nothing tells you apart from me.
If you were me you would run too.

orientations

ORIENTATIONS


We are these cells, this soul, this being.

We are the choice of our own awakening.

We are light that pours through the generations.

Innocent little children dancing to the rain song,

For a season of green to atone for our wrongs.



We are a hunter caught in his own snares.

We are a tidal wave in a sea of broken dreams.

We are flickering whimsy - a breath’s laughter.

The sacrificial dove, the hooting owl, the forlorn falcon

“O, those surreptitious angels in their sweet anger!”

Muttering of dreams lost, deep in our own silences.



We are haunts cries in the aftermaths of battle.

We are fine theatre made out of lost relics.

We are a spider’s webs, a tender weave of time.

Over here the wind blows, over there a story told!



We are dry leaves in this intricate whispering.

Augmenting to a morning of silent conversations.

We are this pen conversing to these sentences.

Lighting the threshold to that wordless portent

And if we turn, what do we see, a river or a shiver?



Or had we bitten more dreams than we could chew,

And we are now waiting for someone who never comes?

memories लिखे stones

MEMORIES LIKE STONES

I count the words in the rain.
Raindrops in which,
A lifetime trembles to take shape.
And we walked that ever-shifting line-
Between the ocean and the land.
Measuring our own fragility-
Against the ways of the tides.

We remain dedicated to this pattern-
That reveals as much as it cancels.
Like nudity that hides inside itself.
Within which a life happened.
Which filled our senses-
Lingering on this beginning.

The days slipped away touched-
By the sun that sinks like a,
Song running through our hearts.
We were a song, yet-
We were trees most of our lives,
Of our necessary self-doms.
Perfection in things always missing.
Out of which we made sacrifices.
On raged-ends of human doubts.

Guide my hand to touch your heart,
Between the scars.
Leaping into tongues!

We entered into each other’s menu.
Savouring sweetness for a living.
The soft shadows of your voice.
The voice you never learned to use.
The unspoken things within words.
We delved into experience and,
Reached for lives furrowed by sorrows.

Memories like stones, like-
Perennials coming back in summer.
Laughter opposes a sad breeze.
Like the way light enters a time.
Lighting our world on fire.

अ वर मेमोरिअल फॉर MUGABE

i wrote this poem in 2008, and when i wrote it i was so troubled with Mugabe such that even seeing his image on the television was haunting. it was that time when things were unbelievably difficult for Zimbabweans, this poem is part of my collection of poems, VOICES FROM EXILE, that will be published in Ireland, by Lapwing poetry in August---enough of this, please have a loook at the piece and comment, or even pass it on

A WAR MEMORIAL FOR MUGABE


He never touched a gun.
Not even in Mozambique.
He never died in a battle.
Or liberated a prison camp.

He fought the war of leadership.
Killing rivalries-
Chitepo and Tongogara
Are still unclaimed.

He fought with the generals-
Of great respect, short mind.
He fought every adjacent difference.
And the masses he longed for,
But never understanding them,
Despised them.

He fought his own wars-
And there is no medal-
Nor a memorial for such brutalities.
There is not even a suitable court to try him.

How could a single man wipe out millions?
In and outside his country.
And gorge thousands in daylight,
For over three decades-
Whilst the whole world keeps mum.

इ REMEMBER

i would like you to have a look at this poem. i wrote it when i was 20 years old, in 1994, and i had been missing my rural home and childhood where i grew up


I REMEMBER

I remember I was a child once-
Some years ago I loved one.
Year, times I have been happy.
I remember, weren’t there sweet little
Tappy, a friend, I dearly remember him.

When I look back to those years,
I remember the cheerful old ways.
By break of dawn we are at the river.
So chilly and cold we all shiver.
I remember how serene and silver-
The river was as we fetched water.

The sun brightly shinning over Mozi Mountains.
Spreading his sparkling warm fingers.
Over lush green hills and valleys, lingering-
Bright blue mist sneaking from picturesque banks.
We could hear the birds singing up the sky.
A sweet lovely song from far away.
Was it a song of a young man in love?

I remember sitting under our Mususu tree.
A tree as old as grandma Helen.
So immortal like the rock of ages.
Eating from Grandma’s black clay pots.
Pumpkins, yams, sweet potatoes and nuts.
I remember my sister, a garrulous glutton.
Gire, do you still remember that tonnage,
Of sweet eatings, aha I want to laugh-

At how you would brood over everything.
Like mother hen over her little things.
Jealous of any hands, eyes and mouths-
Directed at your tonne of those full mouths.
I remember me and my brother Bernard-
Gourmands were these two little brats.
Aha, so sweet and funny were the times.

I remember playing in dusty fields and paths.
A game of soccer during late winter days.
Rhaka-rakha, fish-fish, bottle dunhu, till dusk.
Never thinking of anything but play.
And like angels in paradise, who was a girl?
All equal- boys and girls enjoying gaily.
Until we were hot and naught from play.

We all swarm like bees for the river.
All that shrieking, giggling, splattering-
Water flown so far into the sky-high.
I remember playing “Chitsvare” in Nyajezi.
At deep sage green “Tanganda” pool.
Ask our fathers they swarm there past.
I remember diving from high above-
Into the cool sweet waters of Tanganda.

Was it
buttered pumpkin leaves and “Sadza”?
goat’s meat, fresh vegetables and Sadza?
“Rupiza” or “Mutakura” from cowpeas?
I remember eating delicious and tasty meals.
Our stomachs bulging tightly and shiny, like honey-
We washed down with sweet sour “Mahewu”.
Cupfuls of sweet sour down our throats.

“Hwai, hwai huyai”, merry sweet little voices were-
calling on young innocent sheep that we were.
“Tinotya”, what do they fear so clear a night?
A full moon wonderfully probing and bright.
Like distant campfires, stars sparkling untiring.
“Mhomhi”, they are all gone to “Mutare”.
The wolves will never come back, not for us.
Do come please, “Chiuyai henyu”.

Trudging, treading, oh to thunder of flying legs, hello!
Bumping against one another, a tiny blot of humanity.
Here we come-, fast, deftly and cleverly.
Oh thin air here! Aha Josephina is caught.
Until left only was Enia, our revered cat.
But no, she can’t go past us.
Yet those times have gone past.

We change fastly, notice, we never!
Swept along the tide like waters in the river.
With nostalgia we admire youths rover.
What if we could go back, we all ponder?
Do the waters in Nyajezi go back, up the terrain?
Like dark flooding waters, big trunk trees and stones-
They make new pools, ravines, beaches and courses.
These scars we have are notices of changes and times-

Roads, paths and places we have gone through.

इ हवे अचिएवेद ME

I HAVE ACHIEVED ME


The palimpsest bliss is the green-glimmer of the sun corona.

People in huge---, terribly huge numbers as they dip into shadows

and their meanings are lost.



The colours of those distant rocks: grey, gold--- deep amber!

A line of brown grey, pale-pasted ribbons of rocks

are like hues of an egret’s feathers---, flying past me, the past:

It is like rocks flying on their own fingers.



The faint sound of voices fixing into my memories

and bestowing the inward view to give myself a little rope

to haul inwards.

I know it, I have always known it:

that something is broken inside me.



It is an ancient conceit

to think that there is only one sound in this entire universe

and everything else is just echoes of that sound.

But I will tunnel in like victims always surviving this abuse

by speaking to fish in my own dreams

without even the need to respond to myself.



There is nothing I can do now but don’t ever think

that I am a coward, for once I was in love,

and I loved her so much more--- that wild, wild shore.

And now I am thankful that I have achieved me.



For you are studying me intimately and I am in these tamed records

but you only have a face to measure me by.



But don’t sheath your blade; draw the blood of a finger

and create your own river.

Who owns this river passage?

Not you, none of us, no one is----.

More transparent than these muddied waters

that are the blood waters of our fingers

६टः इयर ऑफ़ ज़िम्बाब्वे TALKS

6 TH YEAR OF ZIMBABWE TALKS

AU election body : The elections were not free and fair.

AU, Egypt meeting : We all agree that the elections were not free and fair. We now beg his Excellency, comrade president Mugabe to form a government of national unity by engaging MDC within SADC negotiating framework with facilitation from president Mbeki


ONE MONTH LATER

Uncle Bob : what really worries you my prime minister

Chematama : A snare, I think a lovely snare. I can feel the signal

Uncle Bob : But you will be my prime minister

Chematama : With what powers?

Huyakwese : My friend, lets laugh whilst this lasts. Uncle Bob has been very generous to us, don’t you see that. You will be the prime minister, and I will be your vice prime minister with the home affairs portfolio. You don’t have to worry about uncle Bob but rather you should be wary of that old schemer, your other vice prime minister with the defence portfolio. That one is the real snake in the grass and I don’t want him in my council of ministers, infact our council of ministers. But let’s sign this deal before Uncle Bob changes his mind.

Chematama : Don’t you see young fool that it’s a trap, he has sweetened our cakes with stupid posts

Huyakwese : Then cut the cake and lets all celebrate my friend

Chematama : Let me go and think about it and consult with my party
( Chematama exit)



Uncle Bob : I have always told you that he is a sell-out. He is going to consult with that McGee ambassador

Mbeki : (addressing journalist). Our prime minister has asked for some time to consult. I have always told you the best solution would come from the Zimbabweans, and I expect a deal to be signed in the next 24 hours

Zimbabwean : When will they sign that bloody deal. We are so sick and tired of hearing these promises everyday

Zimbabwean : Lets give thanks to our African brother Thabo for he has done a great job to bring them to negotiations. Didn’t you see they even shook hands a couple of weeks ago.

Zimbabwean : What shaking hands! Mbeki is a traitor. He is the old boy’s friend and don’t expect any deal any sooner

Zimbabwean : I wonder where I could find food to eat today? I last ate three days ago. I wish Mad Bob, Chematama, and Huyakwese could be eaten


2 DAYS LATER

Vavi: SADC shouldn’t invite Mad Bob and that ladies lover kanga-man from that small kingdom country. We are going to strike like nobody has ever seen if these dictators come to their SADC talkathon thing. We are going to bring Johannesburg to a standstill.

Malema: Yes comrade! We will kill for Mugabe, but if that white kangaroo human rights organisation refuses us to kill for Mugabe then we might even kill for Mswati.

AT THE SADC MEETING

Mbeki : Gentleman and gentle ladies we have negotiated a settlement for Zimbabwe and what’s left is the signing ceremony. But I want to ask you fellow leaders to force Tsvangirai to sign it
( Mad Bob nodes his head and smiles in agreement with Mbeki).

SADC : You have got to sign this deal or else we wont allow you to stay in southern Africa, or even to visit our countries, infact we will deport you to Britain, like what old- man Mbeki is doing to your fellows here caught in this cyclone negrophobia thing.

Chematama : I will not sign unless if I am given significant executive powers to curb Mad Bob’s excessive irrationalities, and I also do not want to report to Mad Bob, but to parliament for starters.
(He leaves the meeting).

Huyakwese : He wants all the powers for himself so what power-sharing deal would that be if he takes all of good uncle Bob’s powers? Too bad I have to go back to Zimbabwe without anything but for him to take all of Uncle’s powers? No!

Mbeki : I thought he would be pressured to sign but it seems not. That’s the best deal I had negotiated from my best friend Mugabe, It was really a good beginning, but I have to start all over talking to that old wiser again, and its something I don’t want to do again. Tsvangirai should simply have signed, but, maybe he doesn’t know how to sign it, after all the fellow is not educated, but he signed that other hoodwink paper in Harare, didn’t he? The wine is wasting away in that beautiful Harare hotel where I have enjoyed spending the best part of this year in. Such a waste! But, of course----, let’s give him some time to reconsider.

Uncle Bob: Time is not what I have friend. Those Brishit browns and damn American bushes are pounding on my front door, back door, roof and all the windows and very soon they will take me to that damn American security council thing and their crime war court thing, you know!

Mbeki : Don’t worry my friend. Remember we still have our Russian and Chinese friends. You know that with Vietnam and that other poor African country, the five of us will block those imperialist British and Americans until god-knows when.

Uncle Bob : Thanks old boy. I will give you another farm next time you make your frequent visit to my beloved country. You know Zimbabwe is mine forever. I was given that country by our spirit mediums Mbuya Kaguvi and Sekuru Nehanda, no, no, it must be the other way round, that is Sekuru Kaguvi and Mbuya Nehanda. But my friend you can do that lie-thing of yours to those bastard brishit newsman over there. I wish Blair was still there. It had been so easier to out-fox him all these years because he talked too much and didn’t do anything of whatever he could have said. He is like those Blair toilets we have in my country. (They laugh). But with this Brown thing, I am so scared of him, and don’t you see that even the British themselves are as scared of him as I am. (He chuckles). And that warmongering son- of- a- bitch, “Shoes” Bush, noo, no, no ,no I don’t want him on my back, no my friend!

Mbeki : Don’t worry!(Addressing journalist). We will continue negotiating and a deal is very likely in the next day or so, and as I have always told you it must be Zimbabweans who should decide their destiny and the deal they want, so negotiations will be continuing.

Zimbabwean : So what does that mean?

Zimbabwean : I don’t know, maybe it means other 5 years with the old Mad Bob, again?

Zimbabwean : iiii,uhiii,uuu

Zimbabwean :

अक्टूबर moon

OCTOBER MOON



The October moon is on my door

Like a little ghost

Raw orange zest

And the chaff of the moon fills the valley

With its pale yellowish light

yellow flowers of light

And it’s melting slivers

breathing coolness



The slivers of the bright moon

rocks down the earth

With heat that is warm to touch

Its half rim like the distant fire

burning the horizons



Pushing night into dawn

Dawn into morning

The night’s eluding face

slipping away with a quite

Undressing the moon

Spherical arc in birth emerging naked

Naked and embarrassed



We might as well say we are

yellow-throated

In the moonlight’s pouring cornlight



Listening for our names

In a million-petalled slivers

of the moon’s being

Unbowed by life’s winds

The moon has pulled over us

like a Cyclops’s eye

In the long silence the moon is hiding.

http://mwanakacreativewriter.blogspot.com/

शोर्ट बिओ DATA

I have had stories and poems published in USA, UK, Italy, South Africa, India, New Zealand, Australia, France, Spain and Canada, in 50 + among other journals, magazines and anthologies; Yellow medicine review, Phoenix review, Wordgathering, The Redwheelbarrow, Pomezia Notizie, Memoirjournal, PoetrySZ, Poetry institute of Africa, Westerly, Penine platform, Eildon tree, RKVRY, Beyond the rainbow, Off-the-coast, New contrast, Earls court, Magna and others. I have also won several prizes and this manuscript was also short listed for the Erberce poetry prize(2009), niminated for a pushcart 2008, and a book of short stories dealing with Zimbabwe 's political situation, MAD BOB REPUBLIC-ECHOES OF AN UNFINISHED CIRCLE, will be published by Lionpress Ltd( UK ), and a book of poems, VOICES IN EXILE, will be published in August by Lapwing poetry, Northern ireland in august 2010

I am a 36 year old man, single, and a full time writer. I write a lot of poems, so also stories, essays, articles, plays, and I am working on a full length novel. Lately I have also been working on as a singer/songwriter. I did my primary, secondary, and high school in Nyanga, Nyatate area and stayed in Mapfurira village in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe up until 1994. From 1994 to 2008 I stayed in Chitungwiza, south of Harare where I was a security guard, a general hand, tea maker and eventually a vehicle sales administrator at a famous Harare motor vehicle sales dealer. I have a diploma in marketing and I am also a graduate member of the Southern African institute of marketing. I left Zimbabwe in 2008 for South Africa and I have been staying here in Johannesburg and I would say "writing myself to such a standstill!"

उनिटी government

UNITY GOVERNMENT

Unity government is a watercolour government
It is a government that’s home to
Ministers and ministries without power
Like coded storylines of untested identity
Within the within is the same, only smaller here
It is its absolute refusal to doubt itself
That hustles us along to our hazardous fringes
Little by little, the big black lies
Strangling the music of our hopes

It is the oppressor’s music ruminating in
The vestiges of our now clogged minds
Stories of false hope bound together
In stoic controversies and contradictions
By two actors seeking out unearned recognition
Leading us astray is this liberal hypocrisy
Just a dialectical change



Hope in Zimbabwe is knit with lives lost
And plaited into a pattern of suffering
Hope afraid of unbraiding the past
Waits for others to undo the knots
The unmaking of our old pains
Whose intricate designs and clever joints
We have mistakenly re-knotted again
Hope acts the fool here, don’t see
Or we don’t want to believe what we are seeing

In Harare north, they still swim in harmless pools
Designing for our dreams
We swim in hunger drenched streets of Chitungwiza
Here they only listen for our voices of dissent
For if they hear us they would kill us with their guns
So we now talk silently like the empty skies
Our very bones hears the sounds of our silent weeping

Each night the empty plates from which we eat
Will be the fields from which you will harvest
New harvests without the words “silent diplomacy.”
And at night we crash into nightmares, thinking
That this deck of misfortune that we have re-created
Would keep shoving us to keep fighting
For the horizons are still ours
But we wish the sun would soften a thousand times over

Unity government is just what it is
Or pieces of what it should be
It is the way you live within it
That makes it unworkable for you
As if it’s a map you can read only once
But feel like you have read it many times
Because you cannot forget it
Whether you want to, or not

It is stinking masks of skeletons full of odour
It is a street-named “government of national unity.”
On a broken down stage called “Zimbabwe.”
It is like bits of old jokes without the laughter
But snarls like jumbled half-bars of remembered music


It is just an illusion, a dilution process
So let’s not shift our minds in reverse
Let’s not fall prey to this new resurrection
A master’s rendition, a repetition of 1987
Just another history waiting to be re-written
Through another trough of empty spaces of time.

links

thepotomacjournal.com/issue9/tendai_mwanaka.html
www.winningwriters.com/resources/critiques/2007/urc_0710mwanaka.php
www.itch.co.za/?article=17
elevenelevenjournal.com/Poetry/tendai_mwanaka.html
www.languageandculture.net/gallery-summer-fall-2008.html
www.sapc.edu/sapress/carin.php
memoirjournal.squarespace.com/subscribe

Ruins

http://www.bookrix.com/-mwanaka

लिंक तो ओथेर work

शोर्ट बिओ DATA

CURRICULUM VITAE

TENDAI RINOS MWANAKA

24 Svosve road Zengeza 1 Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe. Tel 00263777916113

^Email: mwanaka@yahoo.com or mwanaka13@gmail.com

Personal Details

Nationality Zimbabwean

Date of Birth 13 July 1973

Sex Male

Marital Status Single

Languages English, Shona and Ndebele

ID Number 34-054889-H-34

Most Important Publications-Exhibitions-Performances of the last 5 years

Voices from exile, a collection of poetry on Zimbabwe’s political situation and exile in South Africa was published by Lapwing publications, Northern Ireland in 2010. Keys in the river, a collection of young adult love stories will be published by Savant books, USA in march 2012. I have won several prizes. Logbook written by a drifter, and Voices from exile were both short listed by the Erbecce press poetry prize in 2011, and 2009 respectively, I have been nominated for the pushcart twice, 2008, 2010, commended for the Dalro prize 2008. I have published over 150 pieces of short stories, essays, memoirs, poems and visual art in over 100 magazines, journals, anthologies and websites in the following countries, the USA , UK , Canada , South Africa, Zimbabwe, India , Italy , France , Spain , Cyprus, Australia and New Zealand . Below is the extended list of magazines I have published in, both print and internet magazines ( internet magazines are italics). I am also a songwriter.


USA
Poor magazine, Mobius poetry magazine, Wordgathering, Language and culture, Kota journal, Banwood, Poets.com, Poets.com anthology “Immortal voices”, Noble house anthology, The Potomac journal for poetry and politics, Riversedge, CAIRNS, Beatlick,Winningwriters, Yellow medicine review, Shemom, Off the coast, Memoir and, Dwane, Write me a metaphor, Children, churches and daddies and anthologies, Pacific journal, Eleven eleven journal, RKVRY, Bayou review, Struggle magazine, Letterfounder, Praire wolf press.

UK
Decanto, The Phoenix review poetry magazine, Gold dust, Eireings, Poetrylifeandtimes, Poetrymonthlyinternational, Dawntreader, Numinous spiritual magazine, Presford, Inclement, Neverbuy, Exiled ink magazine, Indigodreams anthology “About last night”, Pennine platform, The red wheelbarrow, Windows project, The Eildon tree, The Delinquent, Essence magazine, Neonhighway

SOUTHERN AFRICA
Newcoin, New contrast, Poetry institute of Africa, Christian poetry anthologies, Itch, Storytime, Poems for Haiti anthology, A Hudson view

AUSTRALIA
Beyond the rainbow, Idiom 123, Curious record, LINQ, Sonnet art, Westerly

CANADA
Earlscourt, Nashwaak, Message in a bottle, Tainted love poems, Poetrysoulasylum, Challenger.

ITALY
Pomezia notizie, Lunar stars and feelings

FRANCE
MGversion

INDIA
Kritya

NEWZEALAND
Poetry SZ

SPAIN
Parrebesso

CYPRUS

SCWI journal

PERSONAL BLOGS

Mwanakacreativewritter.blogspot.com, Facebook profile, twitter, myspace, Bookrix, Victory website, Desi poems, ccpoets

OTHER ATTRIBUTES

1 Hardworking, intelligent and an ability to learn and adapt quickly

2 Highly motivated, positive

3 Can perform to the very best under difficult circumstances

References

Mr D Grieg

LAPWING PUBLICATIONS

c/o ballysillan drive

Belfast BT4 8HQ

UK

EMAIL. lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com

Mr Daniel Janiek

Savant books and publications

2630 kapiolani Blvd 1601

Honolulu, HI 96826

USA

Email: savantbooks@gmail.com

Hugh Hodge

New contrast

C/o South African literary journal

P.O box 44844

Claremont 7735

Cape Town, South Africa

EMAIL. newcontrasted@newcontrast.com

थे सुन एक्सिस्ट इन ITSELF

THE SUN EXIST IN ITSELF


I take up my subject and let it be--, about religion, and they say, is he capable?
Then my mouth opens up awareness, cursing backwards to a time lost in mystery,
a time without parallels, invoking the licence to dream!

Peering down---down---down, I see people with layers, free-verse eyes in their faces
and I feel so lonely, I cannot pray.
Praying like prayer is a demand for pity in the power of desperation.
Like giving death-waters to death.

Religions like individuals wreck from within and some live lives like mayflies.
I can see their ending in ice but not soon enough as I endure it.
How I hate ice: My body frozen!

I want you to look into this horror---That you are seeing now, without seeing it
or knowing it and if I could, I would shed tears and consider this wish as an act.

This wish would become a miracle and you are as great as any miracle
that you can think of because you speak with your own life.
Speaking directly into your senses, speaking things not cast in words because
you do not need words.

And if I choose good does that make you bad and if you choose bad-
Does that make me good?
Must we always judge: Must we always seek forgiveness?
The sun exists in itself!

When you behold a rainbow what colour do you like most?
Do you think all the other colours would die for want of the colour that you have chosen?
dying like when a thing vanishes and leaves no shadows.

But I can see their shadows and I can see them walking silently and I can feel----
The sour colours of their fears driving inside me like hungry pains, like minutiae of an angry humanity.
Hungry for lost infinity!

But we still carry the detritus with us because we did not separate, scatter out at night, this night-
Or another; Time did not stop for us.
We had the choice everyone has:
To die now or to die later---.

Now live where the fear of being--- and the love of being resides in rooms next to each other.
Now live where the courage of love--- and the faith in life resides in a time that changes the past.
Now live for the quality of activity.

For you are a seed blown in yesterday’s winds and you would be tomorrow’s plume tree.
Where the nightingale nestles its cares, its feathers, its eggs.

And I feel the satellites of my life-Instruments which plays music;
warming, cooling, addressing. My fears, my angers, my memories.
Memories of myself uncovering the holy city that I see in distances.
So beautiful in the morning light!

And I was like that city once but it was in another life.
In another lifetime---A lifetime which does not have ties with time.
A lifetime that dissolves with contact.

इ ऍम सो सर्री-इ ऍम नो BULLETPROOF

I AM SO SORRY: I AM NOW BULLET-PROOF


Why did I say those words?
Why did I tell her that it was over between us?
Pulling each of these syllables like as if I was pulling each and every one of the rose’s blossoms and the unfortunate thing was that she had over-lived a definite six months in my life but an unwritten life at that.

Celine, and that was her name and nineteen eighty-nine that was the year and she was my first cut into the treacle world of relationships.
During our form fours at Nyatate secondary school.
We were so much in love!

My adoration for her was like dentistry; she stilled the bombastic, and heartened my heart with a love like a map to a new country.
That’s how I thought of her and felt about it all and she was small and fragile and light in complexion and she came from an adjacent village to ours.
She was true, good, faithful and loved me good!






She was warm, balm, and benediction and loved me with a love so searing, so brave, and so honest. She was each note, tune and every sweet sound in my heart and her love was a tracing around my heart and since praise is a language too difficult to separate from love and when Owls hoot we call this hooting a call for forthcoming grief, I still feel it’s a call for love, and I also felt I loved her but the unfortunate thing was that I had also learned how to speak of love in place and think it was the thing that was in my heart.

When you are in love and closer to your girl, she would try to transmute you to a molecular level, but something must have changed over the time we were in love. Something just didn’t make sense somehow. Sometimes she wanted me to be soft, and sometimes she wanted me to be hard in ways that I didn’t know how to be.
I also knew I could snap easily and drastically to the first sign of contamination

But something must have been telling me that it was time that I move on.
It was like a sensation like something had crossed the river with me, or was this my ego running ahead of this time or I simply had a heart like a squatter camp.
But what was that something?

Did I feel dissatisfied with her? Did I feel undeserving of her love? Was it something said, done? Did it have anything to do with something I can’t really express, something unfathomable yet it had been so instrumental in making me feel the way that I did?

Can I say something to pacify myself of the blame? What can I do to undo the wrong that I might have done her? Can I go all the way back correcting that wrong?
Every relationship is like a window, framed and contained, with its fixed view.

And it all depends on what gives you pleasure, that is if you like to look in through the windows or out through the same windows, that is, looking in through the relationship or out through that same relationship.
I have come to realise that I liked both ways of looking at it.
Once a relationship is over I have liked to look in through that relationship so also out through that relationship so that I would see whether there was still something in or out of that relationship for me.

Even if it seemed like it was some months and a lot of things could have changed between us, but I did go back on that relationship, some five or so months after we had disbanded it and I discovered that what was inside and outside of that relationship couldn’t suffice enough anymore for me, and that her love no longer lied inside those windows and I also made a resolve never to return back to what no longer was mine anymore.
Ok, call it whatever you want to but that’s what I did and was it because I am unlovable, empty and a fantasizer?

Someone must have said those words or they could simply have happened in my mind and I also remember what her younger sister said to me.
That Celine had loved me so much but that I had been a pain-some bastard and that they now view me with so much contempt, that I felt I personally do deserved it.
But I was surprised that that sister of hers accepted my date ever afterwards, though she later on told me she wanted to hurt me the way that I had hurt her sister, and she sure took all the pleasures in making my world such a hell-hole.

This girl hatched for a vengeful relationship straight away and like the sucker for trouble that I have always been I fell badly in love with her. With this one I went all the way like as if I was trying to atone for the wrong that I had done her sister and she liked it, and she became a woman insane, murdering me every moment she could.

She knew everything about me but she still did not show desire to meet me across this bridge I was trying to built as if she was waiting to find something else more about me that she hadn’t known about.
I entered this corner knowingly and its corners that I am now scared of ever-after this. I would rather have them planned and straightened, not curvy, before I enter them afterwards.
But all that I could do then was to push the boat far outer for her.

She became the fist woman to break my heart and I remember the waste of pain that comes with the breakdown of a relationship and loss loomed big like the sun eclipsed by the moon and for years after that it seemed to me like as if there was nothing after that first heartbreak and love.
But from that moment onwards I had started to cut sorrows like shaping a shape that I had learned without knowing it.

It became like you could only watch them, one girl after another, coming into your life and getting carried away by some forces you do not understand and to remember their names becomes difficult for their names would be like names of a crash-test, dummies without nuances or meaning. Entropy would always topple them into fallen beauty.

But I had nothing to apologise to them, neither to her, and very little to her sister because I had been true to myself and that’s what everyone else failed to really understand about it all.
That I shouldn’t have faked on the way that I felt because in the long run it could have helped no one.

But I am now trying to listen to these words and all that I hear in these words are the sounds of the stones that I have struck up in my pathways, now yielding sweet-drink memories.





And I know memories selects its own material like some distant editor would read this story and feel she should cut quite a lot of this crap to make this story appeal to a wider readership, but I won’t stop inventing remembering here if I am going to tell this story of my love of Celine and of her sister Angela, and of what a verdant field our youths are for writing, ruminating, pleasure and pain.

One of my best friend openly told me that I didn’t know what I wanted in life; maybe that I didn’t know what I wanted in love could have been a better summation, that is, in people loving according to the ancient measure, but was he correct?

I could have told my friend that I had known when to accept that limit and that one day I would go beyond it.

I had known what to do then and I also know that I could love someone someday, any day I feel like it, that I am waiting for someone, not that I know her name, yet.
He tells me its all part and parcel of my not knowing what I want in life and I am not trying to excuse myself of the wrong I did to her.

I am saying that’s what I wanted to do and I don’t regret the decision that I took because its how I felt but.

I am saying that I now know that I should live with my heart open to embrace those that I don’t remember anymore and those that nobody remembers anymore and I am also saying that now I breathe with the knowledge that the moment you hold them in your heart is always enough to sustain your heart and mind in the future, but I am also saying.

“I am so sorry.”
I have become the bigger person here.
I have managed to open up these memories and enfold them into paper here, these memories shifting into shapes on a piece of paper.
Burn this paper if you want to, you also burn these memories, but I don’t care anymore because I am now bullet proof.